Isaac Isidore Solotorefsky

Isidore Solotorefsky, also Isidore Zolotarevsky (His last name was transliterated with various combinations of letters Z/s, o/a, v/f.) His first name is also given as Isaac, Yitzhak, Yitskhok, etc. ) was a prolific Jewish American playwright, who wrote plays for Yiddish theatre. During about 50 years he authored over 100 plays, many of which had a box office success. Only several of his plays were printed, and the Yiddish troupes used handwritten copies. However in another place the Lexicon tells the story slightly differently: "In the same year of 1897, he also wrote his melodrama, "The Jewish Hamlet," which in the same evening was staged in Philadelphia (with Max Rosenthal as "Avigdorl"), and in New York in the Windsor Theatre, where S[olotorefsky] performed as an actor. Here the play was staged through Thomashefsky under the name "Di shvarts khupe, oder, Di yidishe martirer," music by Friedsell." Der yeshiva bokher is an operetta that retells Hamlet in the Jewish setting. Avigdorl (a Yiddish pet name for Avigdor), a yeshiva student returns home and finds that his father, a Hasidic rabbi, had died six weeks ago and that his mother was about to marry his uncle, who is the next rabbi. Avigdorl also finds father's letter that says that his mother and uncle had an affair. The play ends with the death of Avigdorl after a long argument with the new rabbi. The Jewish Virtual Library says "a wicked uncle smears rabbinic candidate’s reputation by calling him a nihilist and the young man dies of a broken heart."